Long-lasting Imprint of Former Glassworks on Vegetation Pattern in an Extremely Species-rich Grassland: A Battle of Species Pools on Mesic Soils

Abstract

In the White Carpathian Mts (Central- Eastern Europe), a mosaic of hyper-species-rich and species-rich patches have developed in a regularly mown dry grassland in the area of a glassworks abandoned in the eighteenth century. We tested whether and how anthropogenically changed soils affected the distribution of extraordinary species richness. Archaeological features, especially furnaces and waste deposits, showed a higher pH, higher soil concentrations of exchangeable phosphorus, manganese, lead and calcium, and higher productivity than surrounding grassland that showed higher iron and sodium concentrations in the soil, higher N:P ratio in the biomass and higher species richness. Moisture was uniformly lower in soils onarchaeological features, where non-trivially a more ‘mesic’ vegetation interms of European habitat classification occurred. Plant compositional variation was best explained by water extractable phosphorus. Surrounding phosphorus-poorer grasslands still contain the ancient species pool whose extraordinary size determines the exceptional species richness of grasslands in the study region. Its maintenance or restoration demands a persistent phosphorus deficiency.